The Revere School Committee is aiming to hire a new superintendent of schools by the beginning of March next year.
At last week’s meeting, the committee discussed the timeline for the superintendent search process. Earlier this year, current Superintendent of Schools Dr. Dianne Kelly announced that she will retire at the end of the current school year.
School Committee Vice Chair Jacqueline Monterroso noted that the ad hoc subcommittee for the superintendent search has met twice over the past several weeks.
“The first one was (two weeks ago), where we really talked about whether or not we want a search firm, what the RFP should look like, and we started to talk about the composition of the screening committee,” said Monterroso.
The ad hoc subcommittee did draft an RFP for a search firm that was expected to go out to receive quotes by Oct. 1.
The ad hoc committee is composed of school committee members, including Monterroso, Mayor Patrick Keefe, Aisha Milbury-Ellis, and Stacey Bronsdon-Rizzo.
“Separate from that, a screening committee will be formed that includes stakeholder input from teachers, students, and parents,” said Monterroso.
Currently, she said the goal is to have about 11 members on the screening committee with representatives from the student body, the central office, principals, union leadership, teachers, and the school committee.
“The search firm will also be instructed to really guide the screening committee through trainings … all of the initial interviews the screening committee does are going to be completely confidential and in executive session and not public, so we want to make sure that the people who are joining then understand that they can’t then go and post that they interviewed 10 people from other districts,” said Monterroso.
After the school committee has selected a search firm by Oct. 19, it will start the process of forming the screening committee.
Recruitment of potential superintendent candidates will begin in late fall and through the winter break, with the screening committee beginning its interviews of candidates in January, Monterroso said.
“The goal is for the screening committee to give this ad hoc (subcommittee) three to four finalists that we bring to all of you,” she said.
Once the finalists are before the full school committee, there will be site visits by those candidates to the Revere schools.
“The goal is for us to observe how they are interacting with students, with parents,” said Monterroso.
There will then be public interviews by the full school committee of all the finalists with the goal of having the school committee vote to hire a new superintendent by the end of February or beginning of March.
“This will give this new person around four months, at least, to overlap with the current superintendent for orientation.
School committee members are also being asked to provide information on qualities that would like to see in a new superintendent as the search process gets underway. School Committee member Anthony Caggiano said he would like to see someone with some vocational school experience, given that there may be opportunities for new programming at the new high school. Committee member John Kingston said he wants to see someone who has experience as a building principal or vice principal.